Stalker

52

On a large monitor, thirty squares show what’s being picked up by the facility’s security cameras.

A technician in his sixties shows Margot the system of CCTV cameras, motion-activated cameras, their locations, and the laser and infrared barriers.

Recordings from the surveillance cameras are stored for a maximum of thirty days.

‘This is Section D:4,’ he says, pointing. ‘The corridor, dayroom, exercise yard, fence, the outside of the fence, the outside of the building… and these show the park and the driveway.’

The monitor shows an image of the hospital as it was at five o’clock that morning. The static glow from the lamps make the park look strangely lifeless. The clock in the corner of the screen moves on, but everything remains perfectly still.

When the man speeds up the replay, a few trees appear to move in the wind. The night-time security guard walks along the corridor and disappears into the staffroom.

Suddenly the technician stops the film and points at an area of grass that spreads out like a patch of grey water. Margot leans forward and sees a number of dark shapes against the bushes and trees.

The technician enlarges the image and plays the footage. Three deer appear in the glow of a lamp. They walk across the grass, all stop at once, stand still with their necks craned, then carry on.

He shrinks the image and hits fast-forward again. Daylight arrives and the transparent shadows grow sharper as the sun rises.

Cars arrive and staff go inside and spread out through the corridors and tunnels.

The technician stops the recordings to show the night-staff leaving. Margot watches the morning round in the various sections in silence.

There’s very little activity, given that it’s Sunday. There’s no sign of Rocky Kyrklund among the patients who have opted to go out into the exercise yard.

They carry on fast-forwarding, stopping occasionally to look more closely at anyone in the corridors, but everything seems to be calm as the hours tick by.

‘And there you are,’ the technician says with a smile.

He enlarges one square to show her struggling to get out of her car, and her wrap dress slips open, revealing her pink underwear.

‘Whoops,’ she mumbles.

Margot sees herself walk across the car park with her big leather bag over her shoulder, her hands round her stomach. She goes round the corner of the building and disappears from view, but the next camera picks her up outside the entrance. At the same time she is visible from another angle on a camera above the reception desk in the lobby.

‘I disappeared for a few seconds as I went round the corner of the building,’ she says.

‘No,’ he says calmly.

‘It felt like it,’ she insists.

He goes back to the image of her getting out of her car, flashing her underwear, follows her across the car park, and stops the recording as she walks round the corner of the building and disappears from that screen.

‘We’ve got a camera here that ought to…’

He enlarges another square, showing the end of the building, and lots of leaves, but not her. He plays the footage slowly, and she comes into view outside the entrance.

‘OK, you’re gone for a few seconds,’ he eventually says. ‘There are always going to be tiny gaps in the system.’

‘Could someone exploit them to escape?’

The technician leans back, and the wad of chewing tobacco beneath his lip slips down over one of his teeth as he shakes his head.

‘Not even theoretically,’ he says firmly.

‘How certain are you of that?’

‘Pretty much one hundred per cent,’ he replies.

‘OK,’ Margot says. She gets up laboriously from her chair and thanks him for his help.

If Rocky couldn’t have escaped, she’s going to have to think again. The murder he committed has to be linked to the recent killings.

There are no coincidences on that level.

The priest must have had someone helping him, an apprentice on the outside, she thinks to herself.

Unless they’re dealing with a completely independent copycat, or someone with whom Rocky Kyrklund has been communicating.

The technician leads her back through the deserted corridors to Neil Lindegren’s room. The head of security is talking to a woman in a white coat when Margot walks in.

‘I need to talk to Rocky Kyrklund,’ she says.

‘But it’s not even certain that he’ll be able to remember what he’s been doing today,’ Neil says, gesturing towards the doctor.

‘Kyrklund has a serious neurological injury,’ the doctor explains. ‘His memories only come back to him as tiny fragments… and sometimes he does things without being aware of them at all.’

‘Is he dangerous?’

‘He would already be getting prepared for rehabilitation back into society if he’d shown any indication that that’s what he wants,’ Neil says.

‘He doesn’t want to get out – is that what you’re saying?’ Margot asks.

‘We start socialising most of our inmates fairly early… they get a chance to meet people outside the hospital, have supervised excursions, but he mostly keeps to himself and won’t accept any visitors… He never phones anyone, writes no letters, and doesn’t use the Internet,’ the doctor says.

‘Does he talk to the other patients?’

‘Sometimes, as I understand it,’ Neil replies.

‘I need to know which patients have been discharged from Section D:4 during the time he’s been there,’ she says, sitting down on the chair she sat on earlier.

She looks round Neil’s tidy office while he searches his computer. He’s got no photographs on display, no books or ornaments.

‘Have you found anything?’ she asks, and can hear how anxious her voice sounds.

Neil turns the screen to show her.

‘Not much,’ he says. ‘That section has a very low turnover of patients. There are a few who have been moved to other psychiatric institutions, but we’ve only had two inmates discharged in the time Rocky has been here.’

‘Two in nine years?’

‘That’s normal,’ the doctor says.

Margot opens her leather bag, takes out her notebook and writes the names down.

‘Now I want to see Rocky Kyrklund,’ she says.